


The Death of Omin Dran

by SharDBard



Category: Acquisitions Inc., The C Team
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15435015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharDBard/pseuds/SharDBard
Summary: Omin Dran is dead, murdered in Waterdeep. Suspecting that he was killed by one close to him, an associate steals his body from the Temple of Luck in Waterdeep and returns him to his mother at the Dran and Courtier in Red Larch. Propha wastes no time, and puts C-Team on the case. Meanwhile, the A-Team is doing damage control and hiding Omin's disappearance from the public eye. Jim and Viari must find a way to somehow run a business, hunt a murderer and find the missing body.Note: This is set roughly one-five years after S2 of the C-Team. Using the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, and the events of Death Masks, the Shieldmeet alluded to would occur in summer of either 1492 or 1496 DR





	1. Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> This is an ongoing fic, trying to tie into an ongoing world-and-lore-building set of games and publications. I'm attempting to stick as close to canon as I can. Call me out if I slip. 
> 
> I started writing this after the Waffles Inc. game, and do plan to drag the DCA crew in at some point. After the big reveal at the end of the Promise arc in S2 of C Team, I decided to go ahead and post what I had.
> 
> MMLPY)

The cart that trundled up the Long Road was unadorned, and unladen save for the black draped coffin it carried. Its wheels creaked and gravel crackled beneath it, the steady clop-clop of the lone horse’s hooves the only sounds. One figure, a shabby black cloak shielding them from view, trudged silently alongside.  


No birds sang. No bells tolled. There was no cry of mourners streaming behind the cart, and no grand speeches.  


However, the cart was unharried. Its solitary escort had kept watch through the night, sleeping only a little in favor of waking the dead. Occasionally, she would pause beside the road for a drink of water or to let other travelers pass, but she kept her hood drawn over her head, the cloak pulled tight around her despite the early autumn’s lingering warmth. To all appearances, there was nothing to steal from her, besides the old nag drawing the cart and the contents of the coffin itself.  


The diamond dust she had sprinkled on her head to evade the notice of certain wizards notwithstanding, and much of that since spent, she had very little of worth to her name left to be stolen. Had she possessed anything more, she would have burned it for this very purpose.  


She had made good time, having departed Waterdeep under cover of darkness while her charge’s body guards—and how amusing that phrase was now—dozed unnaturally. For a time, the cart had traveled as two horses and no escort down the road in the dark, but the nag could hardly keep pace with her vigor, and the attention they would have drawn in the daylight would have been too much, so they traveled like this the rest of the way.  


As they crested another hill, the village of Red Larch finally stretched before them, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding for the past two days. By now, the wizard and the rogue would be hot on her heels, to say nothing of the paladin of Lathander and her merry band, but journey’s end was here at last.  


“You’re home, Omin.”

\------------------------------------------

She dropped a silver into the palm of a small lad just outside the door to stand watch and pushed her way into the Dran and Courtier. As much as she wished to rest her hand on the dagger at her belt, as reassurance, she knew Prophetess would not take well to the gesture. Instead, she kept her fingers stretched away from her, as if steadying herself on ice, as she approached the bar.  


Behind it, chilly blue eyes narrowing as she rubbed a rag over and over the inside of a glass stein, Prophetess Dran watched her approach. Her plate armor glowed in the late afternoon light that canted in through the windows. Opposite Propha, perched on a bar stool with her legs kicking well above the ground, was the Halfling monk, Grandmother Night. No, Rosie, she corrected herself. A second set of eyes turned to her and became slits.  


She swallowed hard, feeling as if she walking towards the executioner’s block again. Lifting unsteady fingers up to her hood, she made to draw it back. Rosie and Propha both saw her features beneath it first.  


The monk shot to her feet on top of the stool, shouting a wordless warning. Her staff rattled, ready to fly to her outstretched hand, but Propha flung her arm out in front of Rosie. The former paladin’s face was carved of stone, expressionless, and she never tore her gaze from the cloaked figure approaching her.  


Brahma Lutier dropped her hood and glanced to the ground. It wasn’t like her to be at a loss for words, especially after Audra Courtier’s training in the arts of the silver tongue. These words, however, lodged in her throat like fish bones, simultaneously refusing to come up or be swallowed down. As she raised her face to the elfin features of the Mother Dran, she wondered if she’d have to speak them at all.  


Ah, but she knew this look. She had seen it on Omin’s face once, when her team had failed to find sign of his sisters in the Wandering Crypt. This was a face that was both frozen like alabaster and drawn, drained of life and light and hope and compelled to live still.  


Rosie looked between them, little head whipping back and forth. Her lips had parted and her eyes had widened in understanding, but she seemed to be waiting for either woman to deny the conclusion.  


Propha swallowed. “You’ve brought him, then?” Brahma nodded, solemnly. “You, and not Darkmagic?”  


That rocked Brahma back on her heels. “I… Well, you see…”  


Propha pushed around the bar, moving as though she were wading through water. “He’s outside?”  


Brahma and Rosie exchanged looks. Whatever enmity had been in the monk’s eyes had dissipated with her shock. They both hurried into Propha’s wake.  


The paladin nearly collided with K’thriss as he came through the door. She seemed of a mind to push clear through him, and had he not been laden with the very things she sent him after, she might very well have. Instead, her lips screwed up tightly and she stood aside, motioning first him, and then Auspicia past her. Propha blinked, stirred from her single-minded mission by seeing her daughter accompanying the drow, and turned her head after her.  


Rosie grabbed Brahma’s wrist and steered her to the same side as Propha, maneuvering herself between the bard and the returning errand runners. Brahma smiled sardonically and whispered, “I come in peace, Grandmother.”  


The Halfling shot her a baleful look in reply. “Do you, now? After all this time?”  


Brahma knew the smile stayed on her lips, but hoped her bard training kept it lit in her eyes. With a levity she didn’t feel, she responded, “Better at this time, than not at all.”  


Rosie snorted her distaste, then turned to regard Donaar at the top of the stairs. The Dragonborn was studying the proceedings downstairs, as Propha quietly filled Auspicia in, and K’thriss did his best to look as though he were not listening. Rosie jerked her head towards the door and both men made to follow; Donaar with a shrug, K’thriss, as though tugged by an invisible string.  


Brahma walked alongside her as she went, neither pulling her along, nor allowing herself to be pulled. The older woman might have her wrist still in a vice grip, but she would be damned if she allowed her the dignity of a power struggle. She was sure that Grandmother could feel her pulse jumping, but then, she could see the almost imperceptible furrows between Rosie’s eyebrows as she regarded the plain wooden cart and black draped coffin.  


They stood for a moment, the halfling gripping her wrist, Donaar over her other shoulder, and K’thriss farthest from them, staring as the horse chewed at the grass. Brahma felt Rosie’s grasp on her loosen. So, Grandmother did not know the news I brought. This is a surprise. The Jonaari Prince’s features were harder to gauge, but from the look on K’thriss’s face, she could tell that he had expected some ill tidings. Then again, he had passed the cart on the way in, and the Drow was drawn to death in ways that Brahma did not entirely understand. When Auspicia’s sob broke their reverie, all of them flinched as one.  


Propha, however, was as stone. She seized the nag’s bridle, gently lifting its head from the ground. Her voice was quiet, but firm. “We’ll take him around back, and downstairs. Then,” Her eyes speared Brahma in place, holding her more surely than Rosie’s tiny fist ever could, “You will tell me everything.”


	2. Pulchritude’ll Become The Putrid

Brahma’s heart continued to thud in her ears as they opened the cellar doors. With so much of the C-Team gathered, it was only a matter of time before Walnut appeared. She wanted to fall into her elf’s arms and unburden herself, beg forgiveness, solve the problems of the world or watch everything burn around them, but she had so much to answer for. She stood as much a chance of falling into Walnut’s sword as she did into her arms, especially bearing the body of Omin Dran.

“Propha,” she found herself saying, her hand laying gently on the older woman’s bracer as she reached for the coffin, “No. Family does not carry their dead.”

The paladin glared her down, drawing herself taller than seemed possible. “I bore him into this world,” she snapped, “I carried him as a child, and I will carry him now. No one will stop me.”

Brahma opened her mouth to reply, but Rosie slid into the cart, touching Propha’s hand gently. “Not alone. Not today.” The Halfling sidled further along the coffin, lifting the black cloth draping aside to find rope handles set into the wood and take a grip. On the other side of her, reaching over the side of the cart rather than hopping in, Donaar and K’thriss likewise searched for handles. A teary-eyed Auspicia joined the two men, leaving Brahma to take position between Rosie and Propha. 

The bard had pictured what the funeral of a hero was like, had attended a few over the years. The deceased was carried on the shoulders of a matched set of comrades, slowly processed to their final disposition. Flower petals were showered on them, and grave goods might be piled onto their bier….jewels, gilded weapons, perfumed handkerchiefs and wax-wrapped candies. Mourners crowded to receive one last glimpse, one last touch of the departed one. Their deeds were sung, their virtues toasted, and their ills recounted as laughingly and lovingly as their survivors could. 

And so it was laughable that Omin Dran, Cleric of Tymora, was born in a plain wooden coffin on the shoulders of an exiled prince, a warlock with no memory of whom he was pledged to, the outstretched palms of a Halfling trying to keep the coffin level, his mother and sister, and a body-snatching bard. Indeed, within the coffin itself, Omin had scarcely been washed and clad in armor before being left in the temple of Tymora with a bare honor guard of four interns.

Brahma hadn’t realized she had started laughing until Donaar shouted out, “What the hell is wrong with you?” She snapped her eyes over to him, across the coffin, only to find her vision blurred. One cheek was chilled and she felt the tear track starting to trace down from her other eye.

But the Dragonborn wasn’t looking at her. He, Auspicia and K’Thriss had all turned their attention further away. 

Propha shouted, “Set him down!” at the same time as K’Thriss yelled, “Meilikki, no!” 

Brahma blinked again, and this time saw Walnut, with her emerald scimitar drawn, her face painted in a mask of rage, stalking forward. She didn’t move smoothly, like a predator, but with a stiffness of restraint. It was as though she was holding herself from breaking into a run.

Her voice, when it came, was constricted but clear, “Explain!”

Ah, but she was a wonder. Brahma felt her pulse quicken, tightening her throat, her chest, things lower. She had been the aggressor, the pursuer, to begin, but now they were on even footing, and Walnut had claimed Red Larch as her territory. Brahma was in her domain, and had been gone too long from it to not pay proper respects.

Those respects would come with a bared neck first, and a display of the tattooed vines around her finger to settle Walnut’s fears. She felt her shoulders loosen with the thought. From there, they could work through whichever matters came up first… the hunger to press against each other and prove that blood still flowed warm in their veins, or to explain what they had been up to, the cause for Walnut’s forceful anger and why Brahma had been out of touch these long months since their wedding night.

To say nothing of Walnut’s dead mentor now at her feet. 

“I smell him!” Walnut shouted, not placated in the least. 

“K’thriss,” Rosie whispered, “Please drop the group call…” She was casting a look to Donaar and Auspicia, who both had very different responses to sharing Walnut and Brahma’s thoughts.

The advancing Druid was angrily sheathing her blade, and shouting, “Why?! Why does he smell like—“

“STOP!” Screamed Propha. Everyone froze in place. Walnut, in particular, looked as though she had been slapped. Rosie winced, then nodded.

Propha had her back to them all, hands braced on the door frame. More quietly, she continued, “Stop. Stop arguing. Stop talking. Help me get him inside, or leave.” She turned to glower over her shoulder, her eyes red as the gravity began to reach her. “Not you, Brahma. You have much to explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a hasty re-read of this before posting it tonight, but I think it works. For now, let's just say that I agree with a lot of other Shadow Councilors that Brahma and Walnut wouldn't continue to work if Brahma was a D&C permanent fixture and gave up on her own endeavors, any more than if she asked Walnut to give up hers. That's the author's take, not anything I'm gleaning from canon at this point


	3. Sent Home In a Natural Box With A Closed Top…

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is entirely too much exposition for Propha's liking.

They settled Omin on a long table in the basement, in a side room draped with the Acquisitions Inc. banner emblazoned on it. Walnut was held back by Rosie, and the pair spoke in hushed whispers at the door while Brahma whisked the black cloth from the top of the coffin, revealing the rough planed wood. After a curt nod from Propha, Donaar took a crowbar to the lid, prying off fastenings that had been beaten into place. The boards splintered as he pulled the nails loose, dropping each to the table with careless clinks. 

Brahma reached to assist him when it came time to remove the lid, but Walnut was suddenly beside the Dragonborn, shouldering him aside. The Jonaari Prince looked between the two women, swallowed whatever he’d been about to say and stepped back. 

As she and her wife leaned the coffin lid against the back wall, the bard reached out to touch the back of Walnut’s hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t write, or...”

“It’s. Been. Months,” Walnut hissed, and jerked her hand back and whirled away, turning to regard their deceased leader.

Brahma grimaced. She…deserved that, every moment of it. When she sat, it was opposite Walnut, lifting her eyes to her across the table. Rosie had plopped down on Brahma’s right, sharing the bench with her, with Propha to her right. Auspicia squeezed between them, leaning on her mother’s shoulder. Donaar had already taken a seat on the other side of the table, claiming a chair and leaning back in it, studying each person in the room carefully. K’thriss was standing, hovering between Donaar and Walnut, shifting from foot to foot slowly as he vacillated between sharing the bench with the wood elf or taking a seat on Donaar’s other side. 

Before he could make up his mind, Brahma took a deep breath. “I was recalled to Waterdeep for the Shieldmeet. He… It was believed that having a few of us around to calm tempers and keep an eye on events would be wise.”

“Audra was there,” harrumphed Propha. 

The bard nodded. “I know. We alternated nights, traded information, kept our patrons heads cool.” She felt her tongue run between the front of her teeth as she considered her next words. “Where we could. The festivities leading up to Summertide were full of scheming and back room deals where a coy smile takes you farther than a dagger, no matter how much you might wish for one.

“It became clear, by the end of the second night of the Sheildmeet, that there were some matters that were not being settled as cleanly as the Waterdhavians would have liked. After the revelries ended and we could rest and compare notes, we began to see a pattern of favor emerging. Audra and I took our information to Omin. Others… Others took the same information elsewhere.”

“And the riots broke out,” Donaar conjectured. “Chaos in the streets.”

K’thriss cocked his head to one side. “I thought there was a cult of Ao involved in there somewhere?”

“There was,” Brahma agreed, “And shadow guilds of thieves, mages, and fellow bards shouting information on street corners. It was, as Donaar rightly said, chaos.

“The Lords could not let it stand… so they had it stamped out. Every cult and uprising they could have their people lay hands on, even,” she gave a bitter snort, “each other’s. Such is the nature of masked lords.”

She knew the value of a good pause and so she let it hold for a few moments. “By Elient, all seemed to have settled into a status quo again. The Acquisitory Compound had weathered the storm rather well, all told, with only minor repairs left to be made to the outer gates. Omin had turned his mind back to finding prospects for interns to test themselves on. He had recruited heavily during the chaos, pulling more than a few wayward souls from the clutches of cults or executioners to give them one last chance at glory.”

Propha, at this point, was tapping a foot impatiently on the floor and glaring at Brahma. Her jaw was immobile, but clenched tightly enough that her teeth creaked in their sockets from the pressure.

The bard cleared her throat. “That…That’s perhaps better for another ballad.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her hands clenched in her lap. “Audra had to leave. Her absence in her usual circuits would have been noticed. Mine… Mine would not have been. Omin needed to keep eyes and ears in the city that he could trust, people who could move through Waterdeep freely, through even the highest levels of society. Unfortunately, that left only Jim Darkmagic and I. Darkmagic…”

“We’re familiar,” Walnut stated. Rosie couldn’t suppress a snort. Propha scowled, the gesture unclenching her jaw enough to loosen her features.

Brahma smirked. “Yes… quite memorable.” She shrugged lightly, “I don’t have to be, when I don’t want to. So, many nights, I wasn’t.”

“Audra always said, ‘A Bard listens as much as she sings’,” Propha said begrudgingly. “So, you were my son’s spy?”

The elf grimly inclined her head, “As was your wife.” When Brahma picked her head up, she leaned forward to catch the older woman’s eye. “She sent me a mourning dove, with a message. ‘Do not trust the Lady of Luck’. The next great song to work to Waterdeep with Audra’s name on it was a lamentation, of a woman—“

Propha’s eyes had shot wide and she lunged at the coffin like a woman possessed. Donaar and Rosie had also risen to their feet, while Walnut slowly pushed her chair back from the table. 

Auspicia cautiously came up behind her mother and laid a hand on her back. “Mom? What are you…?”

Brahma had stayed in her seat, fingers still tightly twined with each other, knuckles growing white as she clung to herself. Her eyes stayed fixed on her knees. “The song was about a woman—“

“DON’T SAY IT!” Propha shouted, unbuckling her son’s breastplate as fast her fingers would move. Still, she fumbled and growled her frustration until first one and then the other shoulder were unfastened. By then, Rosie had moved to Omin’s side and was unbuckling the straps down one ribcage. Propha lifted her eyes to the Halfling momentarily, hands never ceasing. 

Walnut, K’Thriss, Donaar and Auspicia stood back, dumbfounded at what they were seeing. When the breastplate was freed, Auspicia reached out to accept it from Propha as her mother lifted it off. The older woman unbuttoned the padding beneath, pushing it aside, then shoving the shirt up, exposing Omin’s chest. 

Her scream rang in the silence, rage uncaging the grief she had so carefully packed away. She fell forward, hands gripping either side of the coffin and bracing her upright as she stared at her son’s serene face. What she whispered in Sylvan was hushed, but what she said in Common was plain for all to hear. 

“They’ve taken my son’s heart.”


End file.
